No Freebies From Obamacare!

Barack Obama today cordially invited me (and thousands of other folks) to show support for “The Affordable Care Act” by joining Team Obamacare.

You can join to. What a great idea! If we all pull together we can get the job done.

The invitation came in an email from barackobama.com.

Barackobama.com used to host President Obama’s election and re-election web sites. Now it is called “Organizing for Action”. OFA is one of those much-hated Superpac sites the President warned us about. You know, the ones that can raise unlimited political action funding without identifying its donors.

But this one is OK because… wellll… it’s his!

The email listed these 15 affordable reasons for joining Team Obamacare…

Obamacare is magical.

It makes health care more affordable by providing a long laundry list of free and mandated services listed in the email. That stuff wasn’t required by insurers in their shoddy old substandard plans.

Seems impossible, but the President said, “Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!”

Among the free services are… Preventative care checkups and vaccines; mammograms and contraceptives are free… even for men! There are caps put on yearly out-of-pocket expenses. Women can’t be charged more for health care than men. Lifetime dollar limits on coverage are abolished forever.

There are all kinds of other perks, too… You can’t be denied coverage for preexisting conditions. You can’t be kicked off your plan. Kids are covered under their parent’s plans until they are old enough to be completely unemployable. Kids get vision and dental to. Maternity and newborn services are covered. Emergency rooms are covered. Prescriptions covered. Rehab is covered. So are chronic conditions and hospitalization.

And if all these free and mandated services don’t drive down the cost of health care enough for you then financial assistance is available.

Conclusions

Calling Obamacare “The Affordable Care Act” is an oxymoron. It isn’t remotely close to affordable.

All 15 items listed above cost money. You can’t get something for nothing. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Much of the increased costs of Obamacare will be paid for by working class individuals through higher insurance premiums with larger deductibles, whether they can keep the plan they like or not.

When you factor in the 25 million more Medicaid-eligible people who come on-board next month then higher taxes and more deficit spending is inevitable to pay for that.

In September, a Forbes analysis concluded that, on average, premium costs for men would go up 99% and go up 63% for women.

Not all premiums in all states go up, though. Some states, like New York and Colorado, actually go down. You can find out estimated premium costs by clicking on your state on the Forbes interactive healthcare cost map.

The Heritage Society did their own cost estimates that concluded a much lower average increase of 43%. They published a table listing costs by state that you can compare with Forbes.

The nightmarish roll-out of the $600+ million federal and state exchange web sites is only the beginning. They are the tip of the iceberg.